2nd-gen smart glasses better, but not perfect
I was riding my bicycle the other day taking pictures, talking on the phone and sending and receiving texts without ever taking my hands off the handle bars. All this is possible because I was wearing a pair of the RayBan Meta smart glasses, which is the second generation of glasses from the partnership of the dominant players in both eyewear and social media. Ray-Ban is owned by EssilorLuxottica, which is, by far, the world's biggest eye-wear maker.
My glasses were provided to me by Meta, which is a supporter of ConnectSafely, the nonprofit internet safety organization where I serve as CEO. I have a prescription pair, whose price depends on what lenses you get. Frames for prescription lenses cost $200. The smart glasses with clear or sunglass lenses cost $329. You can also get them with nonprescription transition lenses that darken in sunlight for $379.
Although there are plenty of smart electronic components in these glasses, the lenses themselves are just plain eyeglass or sun-glass lenses. Unlike some augmented reality glasses or Meta's own Quest VR headsets, they do not have a display. They do, however, have a very good speaker on each stem that not only plays high-quality music, podcasts or any other audio but can also provide information, similar to a smart speaker. They also have an excellent microphone for calls, video recordings and issuing voice commands. If I were to say “Hey Meta, who is Taylor Swift” I would get a brief description of the famous singer, a bit shorter but otherwise similar to what you'd hear if you were to ask Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple Siri.
Once the music is playing, you can skip forward or backward with a double or triple tap on the right temple or pause the music by clicking once on the temple. You can also hold down your finger on the temple to play your most recent selection on Spotify.
Unlike the smart assistants from Google, Apple